


An Ugly Mess

by lunarinsanity



Series: Dancing on Tiptoes [3]
Category: Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic
Genre: Dubious Consent, M/M, Masturbation, Sexual Tension, Unrequited Lust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-13
Updated: 2015-11-13
Packaged: 2018-05-01 10:13:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5202011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunarinsanity/pseuds/lunarinsanity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is an ugly mess, not in the face but in the brain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Ugly Mess

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't entirely sure but there was some dubious consent in this oneshot (that doesn't include Kouen) so I tagged it just to be on the safe side. I don't usually write things of this nature but it came to me (ironically) as I was falling asleep and I right away sought to write it.

The first time it happens Hakuyuu is jolting awake. He lays there in his bed in a daze, eyes focused upward at nothing in particular (and yet it feels like he is staring at something very important). The ceiling is dark, but he can make out tiny stars dancing along the granules in the wood. 

No, that’s not right. Those aren’t stars glowing in the dark, that is his own vision playing tricks on him. Dizzying. They are spinning so fast, whirling by in a fury, flashing brightly. He can almost hear them whispering to him. 

No, that wasn’t right either. Those whispers were the remnants of the dream he’d been forced awake from. The voice is a harsh whisper. Begging. Pleading. Tainted and dripping with milk and honey. That’s right, he’d heard this voice underneath him, made it whimper, choked it off with his own lips. His fingers had bruised the tan skin that crumbled beneath them. That pretty throat was even prettier with the purple, and those _eyes._ Those eyes would be the death of him, looking up at him like that, with cheeks that were flushed a deep red and lips parted in a gasp. The image is vivid enough to be painful.

His fingers curl in the sheets. He swears he is pulling at them so hard they will tear. Hakuyuu only realizes he is holding his breath when he lets out a drawn out sigh. It is shaky, so shaky. Ah, it had been so long since he’d felt this, he’d almost forgotten what it felt like. His nerves are on _fire_ , the kind that surges through your body and rips out any resolve to keep it at bay. At some point he gives up trying not to focus on the vision behind his eyelids. It is there to stay.

He bites his lip. _It would not hurt,_ he thinks to himself with waning confidence, _it would not hurt to just_ think _about it and not do anything._ After all, if he excited himself now he would not be able to fall back asleep. Rest was much needed after dealing with his younger brother’s illness for a good part of the night.

So he does it. He closes his eyelids, allows himself to give in to temptation _just this once_ and lets the scene play out in his head. It turns out he is more tired than he thought, as the vision, once crystal clear, now becomes blurred at the edges, until all he is seeing is pitch black illuminated by grieving stars. It is not a happy thing to think about as he is nodding back into the depths, but falling into the milky abyss was cool and comforting, unlike the stuffy hotness that is his waking world.

When he is roused awake by a knock at his door come early morning, he struggles to remember exactly what it was that kept him awake. He stands to meet whoever approached him. It turns out it is Hakuryuu, who has once again vomited and, instead of going to one of the nurses or their mother, has come straight to Hakuyuu. The older picks up the child and forgets about the dream from last night. Right now what he needed to focus on was his brother.

Hakuyuu soon finds that, as he is busy during the day, he has a control over what sorts of thoughts pass over his eyelids when they close, but when he is asleep, he is no longer the king of that domain.

Hakuryuu had been sick all day, and the imperial doctors feared poisoning. Hakuyuu felt no such thing was possible. None of these symptoms were related to any known poison. Rather, he believed it to be a reaction to a food of some sort. The rest of the day was spent investigating what sort of foods poor Hakuryuu was reacting badly to.

By the time they discovered the culprit, the strawberries growing in the courtyard, it was well into the evening. All that worrying had put a strain on Hakuyuu. His heart hammered in his chest, tiredly drumming out a rhythm, all the way to his office. He should not have meddled in these affairs. The imperial guard could deal with it. The imperial doctors knew better than he did. Without doubting their abilities, Hakuyuu said it as calmly as he could, that this was his brother, and he would give up life and limb to do anything he could. Seeing the weak little boy, dehydrated, a sickly pallor on his face drained from life, his chest just weakly moving, Hakuyuu was fiercely angry at himself for not being able to find the reason sooner.

He sits at his desk and hums as he gets to work. The paperwork is calming, and within a few hours he has established a good working pace. At some point, a point he does not recall with his mind absent in his surroundings, Kouen came in to place a bowl of rice and some fish on his desk. The small wrist is what catches Hakuyuu’s attention. Hakuyuu could easily grab his cousin and pull him close, like he did the other day when they were sitting in the courtyard, could easily pull Kouen flush against him and bite at his ear. What lewd things could he whisper in Kouen’s ear to make him stay? There was plenty, plenty of things he could think of what would spur Kouen. 

Hakuyuu’s fingers twitch at the thought of twisting Kouen’s loyalty to him in this way. He could do it. He could if he wanted to, play with Kouen a bit, make him stay for Hakuyuu’s sake, make him hush his questions and just close his eyes and give himself over to his Lord. Kouen was easy like that, or rather, he was _only_ easy like that with Hakuyuu. Another thought, and it leads into another, and another, and another still, and Hakuyuu is remembering what it was that so rudely shoved him out of his dreamscape the night before.

But before he makes the move, Kouen is smiling at him, bowing, and leaving the room. His hearts skips a beat and then some. What was it he was thinking just now? Hakuyuu rubs at his forehead and sighs. His shoulders shake with a rueful laugh. At himself, he laughs at the ridiculousness of this all. Thinking of taking advantage of his cousin like that, how shameful. He would have a woman brought to his room later that night and be done with that.

And yet his eating is slow, the food tasteless and dry. When he thinks about bedding a concubine, his lip only retracts in disgust. Since when did Hakuyuu do things the roundabout way when it came to his desires? He would do whatever it took to take what he wanted _when_ he wanted, and nothing could stand in his way.

But as he eats, he nods to himself. There were many things, things based in propriety, that stood in the way of a tryst with Kouen. His cousin, his _younger_ cousin, his _innocent_ , younger cousin. What had possessed him to think that way of Kouen?

Maybe it was the way Kouen looked at him when he thought Hakuyuu was not looking.

Oh, damn it all. He stands up and ends up having a servant fetch him a woman, specifically, a woman who was tall and slender and had eyes as sharp and intense as the one he truly sought after. 

Like a cat she trails into the bedroom, all smooth and decadent, a smile gracing her lips. She shuts the door behind her and reveals herself. Hakuyuu doesn’t say anything as she massages into his shoulders and places her lips to his ear, neck, and shoulder. Though the heat pools in his stomach, though his clothes are unbearably tight, it is not arousal he feels when she finds a place in his lap and has him fondling her breasts, it is not arousal he feels when she gasps out a ragged “My Lord!”, it is not arousal he feels when she is sinking herself down on him, it is pure, unadulterated _disgust_. In himself, mostly. 

He presses her down into the pillows then. His hands grip her hips, fingers digging into the flesh. She cries out, but he is quick to stifle it with his lips. And this was any less wrong than what he was thinking before? Bitterly he lets the thought fester in his chest until he is angrily rutting into her, taking her raw. Even as he stares at her, as he growls out a low warning that he was going to release, the dream from last night is tickling his eyelashes and tempting him. Tantalizing. He hates this. Not her, what she was. An executioner. She is hanging her blade above his head and he refuses to bow.

When she is leaving, he lays against the headrest and pulls at his hair, before gritting his teeth and forcing himself to calm down. The bile rises in his throat, but he forces it down. It is moments later that he is laying down to sleep, all the while in reproachful spite of himself. All of it, _forced_ down. His eyes squeeze shut, and he is berating himself all until he has plunged into the hellish land of his dreams.

He does not stay there for long, however. In the middle of the night he is gasping awake, tangled in his sheets. His body is on fire. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. He sits up and rubs at his face, blinking bleariness out of his weary eyes. Around him the room is dark, and it is only this that comforts him. A sigh. Another. He lays back down and lets his thoughts reel. This was what it meant to be haunted. Hakuyuu assumed it would be worse.

Later he would realize he hadn’t even experienced the half of it. Come morning, he has regretted ever uttering the words “It could be worse” as a soothing mantra in his sleep. His hair is a mess, sweat making his skin sticky. His hands are shaking. Bags hang heavy under his eyes. When questioned about it later on while training with Kouen, he only remarks on how he overworked himself, completely avoiding the question of “Why can’t you look at me, Your Highness?”

Hakuyuu becomes complacent when, for the next two weeks, nothing happens in his sleep. He continues to occasionally use the court approved concubines for pleasuring himself, though each time it becomes more and more unsatisfying, until at some point he is unable to finish. Try as she might, her face growing red in embarrassment and shame, nothing would happen, and so the whore sits back on her knees and just sighs in defeat.

Hakuyuu pays it no mind, just allows his mind to grow clouded over in the daytime whenever Kouen is near, and then pulls a woman into his bedroom that same night to forget the way the Kouen in his daydreams flushed in his presence, his eyebrows knit together in frustration as Hakuyuu played with him. He didn’t dream, only descended into blackness, and he supposed this was much more relaxing than previous. Being frustrated for so long cannot possibly be good.

His work is going well, a campaign was coming up, and Kouen was as oblivious as ever. Hakuyuu was able to carry out normal conversation with the younger prince and didn’t spend the entire time thinking about his lips that would look perfect when bruised.

One afternoon, Hakuren sits beside Hakuyuu with a vacant look in his eyes. At first Hakuyuu thinks there is something wrong with his brother, before the other one is looking at him with a knowing grin.

“Hakuyuu, you dog. You’ve been gettin’ some, right? But… But you look worse for the wear. I think maybe you should be a little more honest.”

“…What?”

“Don’t play me like that, ‘Yuu.” He leans forward, and suddenly his gaze has grown solemn. “You’re hurting yourself, and I’m not turning a blind eye to it. You don’t have to tell me what’s going on with you, but don’t sit here giving me some fake version of you.”

Hakuyuu nods, and smiles. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes, but Hakuren seems to believe it. He stands up and dusts himself off, patting his brother on the shoulder before heading off to play with Hakuryuu.

It is that night that Hakuyuu is awoken by another dream. He has to bite his fingers to keep from yelling out, for he is fully awake and fully standing at attention. This is not a dream he can soon forget, for it is the most perverted of them all. His daydreams cannot compare. It is in his half-aware state that he palms at himself to relieve the unbearable tension building up in his groin. 

Control, _control,_ he thought he had control? What a riot, what a laughable _damnable_ joke that is. In what universe did he have control over his deepest desire to be nestled deep within his cousin? Hakuyuu chokes out a bittersweet, agonizingly cathartic, guttural growl. His hips buck up in his palm, and Hakuyuu is grasping at himself. Friction, he needs friction, and heat, and goddamnit he needs Kouen. 

But one could not always get what they wanted.

It is safe to say that Hakuyuu’s sleep is not plagued with anymore dreams. He wakes up with shameful stickiness between his legs and a cramped hand, but otherwise he does not recall waking up again. A fitful sleep fit for a fitful prince, he muses to himself. He deserves it, deserves the nightmare and deserves the agony. Hakuyuu finds he does not mind this torture. It’s a lesson worth learning. He had no discipline, no self-control. How can he deprecate himself when he never knew how what it was to be hungry or thirsty or cold?

“Ah, this is an ugly mess. I’m just not right.”

Yet he can’t help smiling at that thought.


End file.
